But to my surprise, he leant forward to rest his elbows against the ship’s rail, a half-smile coming onto his narrow mouth as memories took his gaze to the horizon. “In some ways, yes. Certainly it didn’t take long to run out of objects to play the Jewel Game with. But those two, the young white boy raised as a street urchin and the ancient Buddhist scholar, made for the most extraordinary company I’ve ever encountered, Russell. The one bursting with youth and beauty, the other a sea of wrinkles, the one a guttersnipe and petty thief, the other a revered head of a monastery—but when they met, the old man laid a potter’s hands on the boy, and re-formed him in his image. The bond between them was so powerful, and so completely unlikely, it made one begin to believe in the doctrine of reincarnation. It was the only way to explain it, that they’d known each other many times over the ages.”

I stared; the strange thing was, I couldn’t tell if he was jesting.

He felt my gaze, and although he did not meet it, he straightened and went on more briskly. “In any event, the winter did grant me sufficient leisure to become word-perfect as a red-hat monk. I spent many hours teaching the boy certain skills he might need, if he chose to return to the road of the Intelligence agent, and in exchange he coached me until I could recite the lama’s prayers better than he could, could expound on texts and write simple charms. And long hours out-of-doors in that high altitude rendered my skin as dark as those around me. When the pass cleared, I could probably have strolled into Lhasa without them.

“But Lhasa was where the lama was bound, and Lhasa was where his chela, and now their companion, would take him.

“We crossed over into Tibet in late March, reciting our rosaries all the way. The snows were so high, I would have chosen to wait another fortnight, but the lama was impatient—for a man who had attained enlightenment, he could be remarkably susceptible to his desires—and O’Hara thought himself strong enough for both. In the end, I had the old man on my back for a number of very rough miles—and at fifteen thousand feet, that can be rough indeed. But we half-staggered, half-rolled down the other side, tipped our hats to the startled border guards and said a blessing on their unborn sons, and went our way.